One of my all time favorite (and arguably one of the best) RTS games is Age of Empires II. While I have spent countless hundreds of hours playing AoE2, the lack of high resolution support is a bit of pain, especially on the high resolution monitors that are available today compared to when the game came out. Fortunately, a GamersMint reader by the name of Martin has come up with a solution.
Although the solution below does create some strange behavior with the HUD (head up display) as seen in the picture below, you can use the following instructions to play AoE 2 in high resolution and even on dual monitors (shown below). Here are the instructions:
- Hook up your two big-ass monitors.
- Configure your graphics card to merge the two displays into one wide one. (I was only able to do this with my nVidia card, but if your ATI cards support EyeFinity, that should work too.)
- Patch your game using this awesome utility. The tool spits out a special EXE that runs the game in your current resolution.
- Play Age of Empires II like a boss.
- You can use this tool even if you only have one monitor. So you play in 1690×1020, 1920×1080, 1368×768, etc.
Thanks to GamersMint for the tip!
UPDATED: Fixed link.
haha ki vagyte
The link doesn’t work !! @(
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have fixed the link so all should be well now!
Sorry but this ain’t working for me. i use windows 7 and it gives error that it can’t locate directory and i should open it from te game folder. but it’s already from game folder. so any idea what i can do about this?
Hey Jens! I will play this tonight on my Windows 7 machine when I get home and let you know what I find. I don’t have a 2 monitor setup but I can at least play with it for high res.
It’s not working, telling me it’s a wrong size. Does this shit only work on legitimate versions? You should have mentioned, approx 99% of players wouldn’t waste their time.
It actually only works on illegitimate versions. It worked well for me on my regular no-cd cracked version and on my myth version.
It works on legitimate version – “works” but you need to patch AoC to 1.0e before it will find the .exe files and then I am still having trouble making it run on 2 monitors (ATi EyeFinity here)
This works great for hi-res but I can’t get it to work for both my monitors, it just spits out two different .exe files, one for each monitor size. Is there any way I can edit the size it spits out?
Well done – thanks!
It does not work. It only says the age2_x1.exe doesn’t meet the expected hashcode. Then in yellow underneath it says that it is skipping the patching process.
Hmm, I’m not sure what the issue is. The patch seems to have worked great for most although some seem to have issues for it. Have you made any modifications to the game since installing it like patches or hacks or anything? I’d suggest trying a fresh install of the game and see if that helps.
i have dual monitors using nvidia 660ti graphics card and the patch is not working
i have it working on 4 display set
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/63ffcc040c50115adf0e74508557254d4fc8ba09d7bf6a2875a286112e99c981.jpg
Nice! Very impressive! Is that the original version or the new Age of Empires II HD version that is on Steam?
New hd from steam
Sweet! I wish I had room on my desk for 4 monitors. I barely have room for 1!
Yea, i know the feeling. I can connect 7 displays and i have 5. Unfortunately five it’s max i can fit on my desk. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/73a93f8e35377c0f026c66714f4fe1f0c9b7261489d3bc3555966ef5af9ecb9f.jpg
Dang, I’d be happy with just two at this point!
I just upgraded my set and now I have AOE working on 5 monitors. I just cannot find here anymore upload field to put a new pic
I just noticed the picture upload is missing which is weird. I’m glad you pointed that out so I can look into it! Until I get that figured you, I’d suggest posting the image somewhere like imgur.com and then sharing the link on here.